There will be a time to let go. This is what happens when you catch a falling star. So I draw you closer to me and hold on a little tighter. The end is too near, too soon. But a miracle it is, to catch a falling star at all! Forever is too far away — a distant idea, obscured by Fate. Let them dream of tomorrow, I have now.
At the peak of night, I draw you close. A warm, fluttering light, My affection bounces about, alive and well, exultant.
At the peak of night, I draw you close. I commit to memory the way you feel, the way I feel. I let go of Fate and sink deeply into the now I cut ties with all and float in the infinity of this — this self-contained moment, encased in glass.
The sun will be up soon and your light will melt into the light of a new day.
I draw you close tonight, because tomorrow you return. Tomorrow you join the sky you came to me from. Tomorrow you remind me that while moments last forever, people are only ever loaned to us.
I kiss you and give you back. Melt. Become the sun. Become a star.
Note: I am no poetess, but this came to me. So now it’s also coming to you, because. Hope you’re doing beautifully!
When my inner world is in disquiet, I like to come back to pieces I’ve written, to that moment of calm, of revolutionary stillness when my thoughts align with my words — and some clock somewhere in me is set right and sighs in relief to be finally, finally in tune with itself.
I don’t love writing.
I love words. I am fascinated by creativity.
But writing?
I don’t love writing.
It’s part of my nature, that’s all.
Writing, for me, is survival. I am driven by a need to set the world right, to give back to things the real shape of them. I write to right a crooked reality. I write with an obsessive need to correct and say: “No! This is how it is, this! The sunlight isn’t random, it isn’t something you can ignore. It’s there, a caress, a kiss in a troubled world.”
Writing is like the need to drink water: do I love needing water? No, no.
But do I need it all the same? Yes. Yes, I would die without it.
Note: Please excuse the extreme paragraphing. I’ve been writing for LinkedIn way too much. I hope you are doing wonderfully ❤
A hobby-hopper. A pull-every-crayon-outer, a faded enthusiast, a leave-behind-a-trail-of-passions-gone-colder. I am an interest-plucker, an endless well of curiosity.
I am light, reflected and magnified, travelling from the cosmos to forest and hillside and to that particular corner of a kitchen somewhere, sometime in the afternoon.
I am perfume that spreads through the air. I am here and there, in this moment and the next and the one before. I am a blade of grass waving to the sky, a raven remembering a face, a raindrop falling on someone’s shoulder. I am scattered, everywhere all at once. I am gone, as short-lived as I am intense. I am an imprint, a scar you can’t forget, a vertiginous sensation you cannot describe, a feeling you will never feel again.
I am a falling star that you forget as soon as the morning comes.
I am an old song that clings to your skin, a childhood memory you will remember at a crossroad in your life. I am someone you’ve never met before, but who you’ve known for millennia. I am the last of my kind — a quiet extinction. I am a disappearance no one notices, but which leaves the world changed, silent.
I am a softness you did not know existed. I am a warmth you thought you would not find again. I am the last kite you ever flew; the last time you saw your primary school friends. I am the embrace you never wanted to leave; that one love you kept hidden. I am a calm sea, a deserted beach on a weekday. I am a truth you’ve lost to the years.
I am a morning that comes when you don’t want it to.
I am a dawn after the darkest night.
I am the solemn words of a person of faith. I am a piece of Fate. A common flower that grows on the side of the path you walk everyday. I am the plastic bag flying in the wind. The new poster superimposed on layers of old paper and glue. I am too many sensations, I am nothingness.
I am a chance, a breath.
I am one spark of light, millions of years ago.
Note: This very conveniently started out as me documenting how much of a mess I can be and then the right song played and it ended up being about something else. As always, sending my warmest thoughts your way!
There is something to be said about the aching tenderness with which the afternoon light layers itself on the tops of houses, with what fondness it settles there, tired and warm.
I am in quiet awe of such end-of-day scenes lately, caught up in these little love affairs that are there for all to see, should the eye but linger a little, just a little. Life becomes a picture, a post card in these evenings. As we melt into the summer and humidity clings to us, the sunsets also grow more colourful, the sky painting scenes that might seem fabricated were they not so overwhelmingly, achingly real. One sky, dyed the colour of daydreams, summer loves and the tunes of youth. Pink and lilac, purple and fiery orange, yellow and peach, all blooming into the wide open sky. A spectacle, a feast, a homecoming. The essence of our beings. Mostly ignored. Forgotten.
How essential it is, how absolutely essential.
It was just a few days ago when I was telling him — as we pulled up in a parking lot, reclined our seats and watched the sun lower behind the mountains — how endlessly important it is to take one step back, to feel small. Problems too quickly seem insurmountable, too easily become the point to which our lives and consciousness are moored when we focus only on ourselves.
Step outside of yourself, understand you are small, so small in the vastness of this universe and if the sun can move, if the colours of the sky can change, then will your pain last forever? Will the sadness never pass, when even clouds and seas shift? Is there no hope in a world that everyday revolves around a ball of fire? Though our routines lull us into a sense of stability and stagnancy, should we ever forget that there are greater powers at play? Should we ever forget that we are moored not just to ourselves, but to each other? That our lives and selves ripple across time and space, and there is always, always more to us than what we limit ourselves to?
It is vital to get lost in the details of life, to follow each one until one forgets, until one’s own self becomes a point in the distance, small and surrounded by so many others, part of a much vaster picture.
Note: So I guess this is where I give up all pretense that I will regularly maintain this blog (?) It’s been a strange, healing, bad, no, actually good year. And even though it sounds too good to be true and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, I’m officially a business owner! (WHAT). Ahh anyway, I hope you have all been doing beautifully.
I imagine this is what she would have looked like.
The purified, wispy white hair of later old age peeking out from behind her headscarf, loosely arranged around her rosy face. The same kind eyes and gentleness. Except, she would have had strength even then – that brilliant liveliness and loudness, the same sense of humour that so boldly painted her personality.
It’s been 10 years, my Mother reminds me.
How could it have been? Life has grown around the wound, the hollowness that was left once she was snatched away. The pain has dwarfed in comparison to 10 years of life. But it never fully went away. It never will. Grief is the mark Love leaves behind, it is where we pour all of our feelings, our care and frustration, our anger, our despair once there is no one to receive it.
Seeing her always triggers a back and forth between tears and hope. Tears because they look too similar – it’s like seeing her, hearing her, feeling her again.
And hope, gratitude that something of her survives.
How many people get that? How many people get to have such vivid recollections? As though the person was truly there again, for just a second. Who gets that? I do.
It is a kindness. It hurts but it is a kindness all the same.
I’m always a little shaken after these encounters. We all are. My sisters burst into tears as soon as they saw her. She understands, they all do. They know the pain of loss, how tender it leaves you in places, even if it’s been 10 or 20 or 50 years.
I’m 25 and well, I want to tell her. Life is long at 25; everything has both changed and remained the same. I think of you even now.
For now, these thoughts will keep falling in the timeless space of grief. But someday, someday…
I’ve been accused of hardcore cynicism in my time.
But well, life’s like a cat. It scratches me and then wraps itself around my legs. It finds me when I am feeling low and sits with me. Life endears itself to me, again and again.
In my hurry to leave for work, I left some chia seeds at the bottom of a jug of water. Without even seeing the light of the sun or caring to obtain my permission, these little devils sprouted on the side of my vessel. On one side, their roots unfurled all the way down to the shallow water; on the other, their long, green necks stretched to catch a taste of that promised glory, the nourishing touch of sunlight.
Eager, eager, eager: to grow, to be, to take up space.
4 days later, returning from the earthly matters that take up most of my time, I need my jug. And I find this illegal arrangement.
But really, at this point, what else can you do?
When you see these roots clinging, these tender leaves already crawling to the sun — when you see such desperation for life and you consider the pains it took to be itself, just, what else can you do?
I got my hands dirty digging around for some fresh soil. Out of an old cup, I fashioned a plant-holder and very gently peeled back every transparent root and laid them out into some earth.
I gave them fresh water and their first taste of sunlight. And a name.
Zenith the Zealous.
Wasn’t I once like that before? Eager for life, fighting for it. And now, if I can help another life grow, won’t that just be beautiful?
Quote of the day:
“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
— J.R.R Tolkien
Note: So this really is the day when I get emotional about chia seeds huh? 😂
I am enjoying having lunch alone, under the swaying palm trees ripe with the promise of tranquillity, in the windy corridor between building A and B.
I love being here at odd lunch hours, it really cements what this place is about: nebulousness, off-the-mapness, in-betweens. It is the liminal space between the work world and individual life, a bridge where, crossing between two buildings, you stop being an employee for a hot second, the kind that can spill into infinity. You enter building A a worker, spill out into the windy corridor all-too human, all-too much of a star, all-too other and foreign even to yourself. Your self stretches out as though an accordion to showcase its multiple intricate layers, and the palm trees take you away to bygone summers. You are not a name on the payroll before you enter building B. No, you are an in-between, a free spirit. You become a kaleidoscope of yourself and the corridor is the light that shines so it may exist. You don’t think about work, you wonder about possibilities: maybes, perhapses, what-ifs.
I love going there for lunch at around 13:00 (start-up mentality lets me have lunch when I want basically) when the courtyard is free and deserted. For an hour long, it is all mine. Even now during the winter time, when it is too cold to be out, when common sense calls for warmth and safety, I somehow still find myself making my way to this windy place, peering through the gaps between the fronds of the palm trees to catch a look at a strip of sky or moving cloud.
1 p.m finds me gazing into the windows of building A, watching the reflection of clouds pass along one window, disappear into the concrete between the other window, then re-emerge into the next one.
Lunch tastes different too.
My senses are focused, attuned, at peace. I am in the moment as my nails dig into the fragrant skin of a clementine, peeling it and pulling out each plump, juicy wedge translucent with the promise of sweet citrusyness. And the spaghetti tasted more of home than tomatoes, every bite a step further inwards to the cherished, overgrown garden of memories. And oh, the melon iced tea in its glass bottle that tasted so sweetly, so gently of summer.
I wish I had brought a book with me today. It is this wondrous, ordinary-looking setting that has witnessed my exploring of “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran. It is here that I have found myself over and over in his words and even in the spaces between them.
I am going to miss this when I leave one day, invariably. And even as I tell myself that this is neither here nor there, I am reminded that half the year has already passed and that I may well be leaving too soon.
Note: Alternate title for this blog post: “The one where I make up all the words.”😂
Their encounter, the summer they had spent together —caught in between afternoon siestas under flowering bougainvillae and warm beaches stirring under summer’s breath— could all be summed up in one moment. It was like accidentally looking into the sun with naked eyes — they were too tender, and the light scalding. Neither of them could hold that light, burning and fierce with the will to live.
Looking back, their relationship (the nature of which neither he nor she could ever bring themselves to settle on— “romantic” seemed too cheap a word for what they shared, “friendship” left a lot uncovered) had happened, in its entirety, in that instant. The one that leaves you momentarily blind, that catches you unaware before you can even think to turn away or flinch. A moment in life when you stumble into something you cannot handle.
The light pierced through their tender hearts as though fragile retinas, burning holes in them every chance encounter, every stolen moment. They snapped away, for the first time feeling the true burn of their encounter, when the first cool night settled in the all-consuming heat of the summer, first her, then him. The gravity of their common mistake fell over their heads like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing any hope of deciphering that odd relationship.
Years later, when they would meet again in a crowded street in some foreign city, passing each other by, they would not know where these burns came from, except from a summer a long time ago, on an island already subsumed by the water. What once was a happy place.
So naturally pink! It looks like the sky has been dyed in cotton candy colours, like you could reach out, pluck a piece of the sky and put it in your mouth. It is the exact shade I rave about endlessly in my blog posts and I cannot get enough of it.
I tried going up the roof to capture that colour without any inconvenience, but it just did not look the same. And I found myself being grateful for being exactly where I was in life. I was suddenly grateful for how the whole day had gone, for how it lead up to me looking up at the right place, at the right time to witness that sky.
Most days I have so many regrets. So many forever unanswered what-ifs that taunt me. Yet today, I was grateful to be just where I was. And to have been where I have been because without it, without the good and the bad, I would not have today, as it is.
Note : I realise on certain screens the pink colour does not really appear. Plus, I’m not really a photographer either so bear with me kindly.
“I find myself stilling and leaning towards the light, too, yearning to feel its warmth nourish my blemished skin, caress my closed eyelids and slide down the panes of my upturned, trusting (vulnerable, so vulnerable) face.”
The city takes me to her tenderest places, where trees are still saplings and their foliage bursts like foam into the air, trapping errant bits of sunlight in their nooks.
Did you know that even a city as busy as mine could hold peace and light within its midst ? That it could be one part teeming thoroughfares, the cacophony of a thousand lives and one part silence, reflection ? The city provides a sanctuary from herself; a place that is pure and untouched, like a greenhouse where young and diseased plants may grow. Where they can be cured of the smog tainting their leaves, the carbon monoxide stuck to their waxy surface.
I find myself stilling and leaning towards the light, too, yearning to feel its warmth nourish my blemished skin, caress my closed eyelids and slide down the panes of my upturned, trusting (vulnerable, so vulnerable) face. I want to feel young again and pure. To cleanse myself of these deep-rooted impurities : self-deprecation, insecurities, absorbed toxicity. I want to uproot these baobabs of fear that have crawled under my skin, their roots tightening around my feebly-beating heart, feeding off of it. Underneath all that crap, my heart is still young, tender, tender like it was 10 years ago. There is innocence left somewhere in it. And dreams for days on end.
This is how life feels like a movie again.
Flowing with otherworldly gentleness, a crystal-clear stream flows under the overarching roots of a centenarian tree, carrying its yellowed leaves. All the sounds of the city (the honking, shouting and engine roars) slow and fade, submerged in that singular stream, seeming so far away… All you hear, marvellously, is the sound of the water running by. But it’s not really running, you know ? It glides by, or strolls. Its flow is leisurely, unhurried ; it knows exactly where it needs to be and how to get there, so there is no rush, no anxiety, no what-if-I-don’t-make-its and no fear of missing out.
It just is —something I struggle to do everyday of my life.
Like this though, the blood inside my body stops rushing, gushing, hurrying and instead blissfully, oh-so blissfully flows with the stream. Somewhere in the distance, someone has hit the rewind button or played with the speed settings because my whole being slows and settles with that small body of water, running strolling its course. No longer am I swimming against the currents, gasping through the throngs of people and the weight of their unfulfilled dreams. I just flow with the water, somewhere in the city.
Young Adult, Old Soul 